As science and technology have improved in the past 50 years many old beliefs turned irrational in our opinion. That included the concept of fasting or in general terms abstinence from food. But surprisingly there has been shift in the past decade or so – one reason could be the interest of weight loss programs to promote controlled fasting to their customers. But, people in general are getting more aware of what fasting is and are more interested in understanding how it helps them lead a healthy life. There have been many studies funded to understand the effects of fasting on human body and most of them have provided very promising results.

So where did it start? Almost all early texts related to various religions – the Bible for the Christians, the Quran for the Muslims and the Gita for the Hindus – carry references to fasting. Each of the religions prescribe a set of rules to be followed while fasting. The spiritual benefits of fasting are soul cleansing and a feeling of togetherness with god. People feel emotionally attached towards god when they fast and they feel that they have surrendered their body to the holy spirit. This, many feel, helps and enables them to learn more about life and its purpose.

Biological Benefits:

It is not just the spiritual benefits that make people fast nowadays as there are many biological benefits associated with it. When one starts fasting, the digestive system shuts down as there is nothing to digest and all the energy that is generally used by the organs that digest is available for free to the rest of the body. The body after sensing that there is no food input, switches to conservation mode and runs slower than it generally does. The metabolism rate comes down so does the heart rate. I have measured heart rates of 50 beats per minute just before i finish a fast. The body temperature comes down as well so that more energy is saved in order to keep the body going for long. Read the rest of this entry »

Growing taller is a goal set by those who want to gain more height and to look more attractive. This urge to look attractive and beautiful is very basic and innate in all the human beings. Height is one factor that plays a very important role in gaining an attractive persona. There are those folks as well who have to suffer from a low self esteem due to the fact that they consider themselves not that charming. The good news for all such people is that the height can be increased by gaining the desirable inches and that too by maintaining a healthy life style. Yes, this is a fact that growing taller can be achieved by simply following a healthy life style. You won’t need to go for surgeries and laboratory produced growth hormones rather you need to follow a life pattern and life style that is absolutely healthy and it will help you in gaining more height.

Growing taller isn’t just about going crazy after medicines and pills that raise the slogan of increasing the height. Mostly, these tend to end in no favorable results. On the other hand, you can maintain a healthy life style and can add inches to your height. There are some factors in this regard that you need to keep in mind. Read the rest of this entry »

Among all the vitamins, the only vitamin that is not taken with our meal is vitamin D. Rather it’s been formed in the skin with the help of sunlight. You will see lots of commercials about how to prevent and save yourself from sunlight and there you also see many dangers of being under sun. But in fact for enough production of vitamin D, the sun exposure duration required is minimum. It is true that too much exposure to sun light is harmful for us due ultraviolet rays. But the exposure duration required for adequate vitamin D production is very little. A few minutes a day is sufficient.

Vitamin D performs a very important function for our body. It controls the amount of Calcium that is absorbed into our body from food through gut. This calcium is needed for building strong teeth, bones and also needed for our skeletal muscles to contract as well as cardiac muscles. Nerve conduction is impaired without calcium. It’s a very important component of our blood coagulation system. Without this our coagulation system won’t work properly. So calcium is very important for us and its concentration in the blood should remain at a certain minimum level to perform all these mentioned tasks properly and Vitamin D ensures it.

Now what is basic mechanism by which the vitamin D is formed in our body? The inactive form of vitamin D is 7-dehydrocholesterol. This is converted to Vitamin D3 by ultraviolet ray. Another name for the vitamin D3 is cholecalciferol. This form is then converted to an active form in the liver by hydroxylation and named as 25-hydroxycholecalciferol. Finally this 25(OH)D3 is converted to more and final active form by another hydroxylation process in the kidney and the active form named as 1,25-dihydroxycholecalciferol. This active form is produced with specific signals in response to needs of the body. It regulates the absorption in the intestine; regulates the absorption or secretion of calcium from bones and regulates the re-absorption in the liver and kidney. Read the rest of this entry »